[CentOS] software raid

[Joshua Baker-LePain]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 at 12:42pm, Les Mikesell wrote

> chrism at imntv.com wrote:

>> If you need to serve files in an enterprise situation and you *cannot* 
>> afford a $500 RAID card, then I think you've got more pressing issues.  :)
>
> But what's the point?  Unless you are running raid 5, which is pretty 
> pointless itself with cheap disk space, the controller isn't really doing any

You know, the whole "disk is cheap, so why use RAID5?" argument just 
doesn't wash with me.  Sure, disk *is* cheap.  But some of us need every 
GB we can get for our money (well, given I'm spending grant money, it's 
actually *your* money too (if you live in the US)).

To demonstrate, let's look at a 24 drive system (3ware has a 24 port 9650 
board).  Newegg has 500GB WD RE2 drives for $160.  So for $3840 in drives 
I can get:

a) 6TB RAID10 => $0.64/GB

or

b) 10.5TB RAID6 w/ hot spare => $0.37/GB

Umm, I'll take 75% more space for the same money, TYVM.

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University